A Small Business Guide to Marketing on a Budget: 6 Tips That Work

By akashn on January 26, 2018

No matter how small your business is, you can start an effective digital marketing campaign that will help you succeed. There are many affordable techniques that can attract traffic, boost conversions, and/or promote your brand. You might need to limit yourself to only using a few if your budget is very limited. However, once they get working, your revenues shall increase, and you’ll be able to invest more money in marketing.

Bear in mind that having a budget, meaning a detailed plan for where your money will go, is essential. It will help you to use your funds most efficiently. If you don’t know how to develop a marketing budget, use specialized templates available online.

6 Low-Budget Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

1. Focus on one social media network, but give it your all

Social media marketing rocks, but for it to work well, you must optimize your content for the exact requirements of the network. You also need to be active there and invest both time and money in advertising and managing your account.

Choose the network by studying social media marketing statistics. Be sure to look into as many reports and stats as you possibly can as you can’t afford to miss with this decision. Note that you should focus not on the most popular network overall, but on the one favored by your targeted audience. For example, millennials prefer Twitter while LinkedIn is a better network for targeting professionals and B2B marketing.

2. Boost your website performance with a better hosting

Web hosting can give your website a boost by increasing its security and performance. Switching to a new host can also help you save some money, as some of these services are rather cheap. To pick the best offers on the market, you should study reviews of various providers from independent sources, like Web Hosting Media.

Note that when you are dealing with cheap web hosting services, you should read the contract very carefully. Pay attention to the fine print as it might have hidden fees and other ‘tricks’.

3. Promote on Reddit and Quora

Quora and Reddit are two of the fastest growing social networks that attract an extremely diverse audience. They are perfect for small business marketing because promoting your business there requires very little investment. Ads and other overused marketing tactics won’t work on these networks. In fact, they can damage your brand as the audience on Reddit and Quora loves to troll them.

Instead, you need to create accounts for your business and do the exact same things all other users do. Try to establish yourself as an expert in your specific niche. Comment on other users’ posts and publish relevant content pieces of your own.

However, don’t try to promote your products/services in your posts. Make people respect and love your brand instead, and your customer pool will grow from there.

4. Create DIY Infographics

Creating a professional infographic is very expensive. However, you can make simplified versions of this visual content yourself, using tools, like Visme, Canva, and Pictochart.

Small businesses can’t invest in big research to present some original data, but they can make great instructions and guides. You can also collate publically accessible data and present it in a more efficient manner that your customers will appreciate.

5. Make your own instructional videos and product/service presentations

Like with infographics, you can make your own videos easily and cheaply today. Use tools like Magisto or Videoshop to create educational videos for your customers. Promote them on your main social media channel, website, and YouTube.

Note that more people are watching YouTube today than cable TV, so it’s one of the best marketing channels. And if you use this technique for making videos, this promotion will cost you near to nothing.

6. Repurpose your old content

Small businesses with tight marketing budgets won’t be able to hire content writers to create many top-quality unique pieces. So, you should repurpose the content you have to make it serve you longer.

For example, create infographics and/or that illustrate different points of the piece or expand on them. You can also break a big piece of content into several smaller blog posts. Or go the opposite way and combine several pieces into an e-book.